GOPers accused of abusing courts

That’s the bottom line to a new Democratic pitch in three red-state Senate races where tort-reform Republicans stand accused of abusing the courts for their own personal gain or political agenda.

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In Nebraska, state Sen. Deb Fischer faces new questions about a bitter 1990’s ranch land dispute in which she and her husband sued their elderly neighbors, who had refused to sell and were forced then to spend about $40,000 to fend off the Fischer’s legal attack.

In Montana, the city of Billings ran up more than $20,000 in legal bills, defending the local fire department against a 2010 damage suit brought by Rep. Dennis Rehberg, a wealthy landowner. And in Indiana, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock spent close to $2 million in taxpayer funds on a high-priced New York law firm, pursuing a short-lived but doomed challenge to the Chrysler bailout in 2009.

It’s not yet a “man bites dog” story, but it’s getting close. Trial-lawyer Democrats showing up the Republicans as a litigious lot? Who knew? Is it still the Grand Old… Party… or Plaintiffs?

“It’s a pattern we’ve seen before,” Linda Lipsen, a top executive for the trial lawyer lobby, told POLITICO. “The tort reformers want to limit everyone’s options but their own. You would think candidates would be more self-aware.”

Republicans counter that Democrats are only plowing old ground in a vain effort to save failing Senate campaigns. But in these closing weeks, hundreds of thousands of dollars are being poured into television ads highlighting the lawsuits and asking independent and Republican voters to take a second look before Nov. 6.

“Suing your neighbors for their land doesn’t reflect the Nebraska values I grew up with and learned,” says Fischer’s Democratic opponent, former Sen. Bob Kerrey. Suing the local fire department — as Rehberg did — isn’t so popular in Montana, either.

The defendant, Billings, was the state’s largest city and part of Yellowstone County, a swing area and the biggest prize in a hard-fought race matching the Republican against the incumbent Democrat, Sen. Jon Tester.

“How many people in this room are from the city of Billings?” Tester asked the crowd at a debate this month in the city. “Well, thank you very much – Congressman Rehberg has sued each and every one of you.”

“The first thing you do when firefighters come and you got a grass fire and they put it out and they burn the bushes and they put their butt on the line,” Tester went on. “You don’t respond by saying thank you by filing a lawsuit with monetary damages, which is exactly what he did.”